Driverless cars ‘will drive better than you’, says expert

Reckon you’re a dab hand behind the wheel? Well it’s only a matter of time until robots outclass you on the road, according to one expert.

Speaking during a roundtable briefing at MWC 2017, Patrick Little, SVP of Qualcomm’s Automotive Business, detailed how self-driving cars will be safer than those operated by human drivers. Qualcomm is a world-leading chipmaker that’s working with big-name brands like Peugeot, Audi, and Volkswagen to bring driverless cars to reality.

“Eventually, the autonomous car will drive better than you,” explained Little, “because it will have more sensory perception – radar, lidar, cameras.”

“You’re going to be connected to the network around you. You’re going to be connected to a pedestrian stepping off the curb. You’re going to be able to see around corners,” he continued.

Most of the auto industry has settled on driverless cars hitting the roads properly in just two or three more years. At the briefing, Jean-François Salessy, Peugeot’s SVP of Electric Systems development, said: “The next big thing for automotive will be the connectivity and autonomy of the car as well. By 2020, it will come very, very soon – very, very fast.”

He also described how when self-driving cars eventually roll out, we’ll see drivers literally taking a backseat.

“When you are in autonomous mode, you probably won’t be in the same driving situation as what you are doing today, so the driver will be keen to do other things – texting, doing a video call,” Salessy explained. “We’ll have multiple high-resolution displays [in the car], 2K, 4K displays.”